Author: Frank Salvato

The endless stream of TikTok clips, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts may be doing more than shortening attention spans: emerging research indicates that excessive short-form video consumption can weaken adolescents’ “future time perspective,” the ability to connect present choices with future consequences. A longitudinal study of 1,567 adolescents found that short-form video addiction predicted declining academic resilience and that diminished future orientation helped explain the relationship. Other research similarly associates stronger future focus and active self-control with lower risks of problematic short-video use. The findings raise a broader concern for parents and educators: digital platforms built around rapid novelty and…

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries that created optogenetics, a revolutionary technique allowing scientists to activate or silence individual nerve cells using light. Hegemann and Nagel’s work identified channelrhodopsins—light-sensitive proteins originating in algae—while Deisseroth demonstrated that these proteins could be introduced into mammalian neurons and used as extraordinarily precise biological switches. The technology has transformed neuroscience by allowing researchers to move beyond merely observing brain activity and experimentally determine how particular neural circuits influence memory, emotion, movement and behavior. Optogenetics is now being investigated for applications…

Deutsche Telekom is accelerating its embrace of artificial intelligence as a core business strategy, projecting that AI and automation could deliver roughly €2.5 billion in indirect cost savings by 2030 compared with 2023 levels while simultaneously creating new sources of revenue. The telecommunications giant expects approximately €1.1 billion in gross savings outside the United States by 2027 and aims to grow AI-related business revenue outside the U.S. from about €250 million in 2026 to roughly €800 million by 2030. AI is already being deployed across customer service, network management, software development and administrative operations, while new offerings—including real-time call translation,…

As artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous across corporate America, simply gaining access to powerful models is no longer enough to create a durable competitive advantage. New research involving 154 leaders across 27 countries suggests the differentiator increasingly lies in proprietary organizational knowledge—especially the expertise, judgment, operating practices and institutional memory that employees carry but companies have never formally recorded. AI can potentially turn that previously inaccessible knowledge, along with vast stores of unstructured documents, emails, transcripts and other “dark data,” into usable corporate intelligence. The opportunity is substantial because much of enterprise information remains unstructured or underused. But extracting it requires…

A new generation of artificial-intelligence agents is moving beyond the familiar chatbot model and beginning to perform real-world digital tasks for consumers, promising to handle everything from travel planning and subscription cancellations to shopping, email management and administrative chores. Products including Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots and Instinct represent a fundamental shift from AI that merely provides information to AI that can independently navigate websites, interact with applications and take actions on a user’s behalf. The technology offers enormous convenience but introduces equally significant questions about privacy, security and control because useful agents often require access to email, calendars, files, browsing…

Google’s rapid expansion of artificial intelligence into American classrooms is drawing growing resistance from teachers, parents and even students who say tools intended to improve education may instead be weakening fundamental academic skills. Through its dominant presence in school-issued Chromebooks, search and classroom software, Google has positioned Gemini and other AI features directly in front of millions of students, making instant answers increasingly difficult to avoid. Reports from educators describe students becoming dependent on AI for writing, research and problem-solving, while some students acknowledge struggling when forced to work without it. The concerns arrive alongside troubling international data: the latest…

For years, Americans have been encouraged to make their homes “smart.” We connected thermostats to the Internet, installed cameras at the door, gave voice assistants access to our living rooms, connected refrigerators to Wi-Fi, automated lights and locks, and allowed apps to control everything from garage doors to security systems. The bargain seemed straightforward: surrender a little information and receive a great deal of convenience. Artificial intelligence could fundamentally change that bargain. The smart home of yesterday waited for instructions. The AI-powered home of tomorrow may make decisions autonomously. It could determine when the doors should lock, what temperature the…

Norway is moving toward a temporary ban on AI-enabled smart glasses in selected public and privacy-sensitive locations as governments confront the surveillance implications of increasingly inconspicuous wearable technology. The proposal could restrict smart glasses in parks, beaches, museums, shopping centers, public events, schools, playgrounds, youth clubs, healthcare facilities, swimming pools and gyms with changing areas, where officials fear people could be photographed, filmed or audio-recorded without realizing it. The government emphasizes that it is not pursuing a blanket prohibition: private use and circumstances in which others are not exposed to nonconsensual recording would remain permitted, while exceptions could protect socially…

British satellite company Open Cosmos is preparing an ambitious low-Earth-orbit communications network intended to provide Europe and allied governments with a secure alternative to foreign-controlled systems such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Chinese satellite networks. The company’s ConnectedCosmos project calls for more than 96 satellites in orbit by the end of 2028 and a foundational constellation of 192 satellites providing global coverage by 2030, with room for significant expansion. The satellites will operate at roughly 1,050 kilometers, or about 650 miles, above Earth and use optical inter-satellite links to move information through space while reducing dependence on vulnerable terrestrial infrastructure…

Chinese artificial-intelligence developer DeepSeek and technology giant Huawei have joined forces to develop and open-source programming infrastructure for Huawei’s Ascend AI processors, marking another significant step in China’s campaign to reduce dependence on American semiconductor technology. The collaboration includes compute and communication libraries, native support for Huawei’s Ascend 950 chips through the high-level TileLang programming language, and optimization of a “supernode” computing system containing 128 Ascend 950 processors. DeepSeek presents TileLang as a simpler programming model than Nvidia’s CUDA, the deeply entrenched software platform that has helped cement Nvidia’s dominance of AI computing. The partnership comes as Huawei expands its…